The Story Begins…
When quiet, bookish Tatiana meets Onegin, she falls instantly in love. But Onegin sees only a foolish young girl. Impetuously he flirts with Tatiana’s sister Olga, outraging Lensky, Olga’s fiancé and Onegin’s only friend. Lensky challenges Onegin to a duel, with tragic consequences…

From Opera to Ballet
Choreographer John Cranko first approached Pushkin’s 19th-century verse novel Eugene Onegin, creating the choreography for a 1952 production of Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name. Cranko was inspired, and later suggested to the Royal Opera House board that he create a ballet version. The idea was rejected, out of concern it would conflict with the opera. In 1961 Cranko moved from London to Stuttgart Ballet and there received support to create Onegin – provided he avoided the opera’s music. The ballet received its premiere in 1965 and has since been taken into the repertories of companies around the world.

A Musical Montage
Cranko commissioned the score for Onegin from Kurt-Heinz Stolze, then the Kapellmeister for Stuttgart Ballet. In Stolze’s own words, he ‘culled the music from various lesser-known compositions by Tchaikovsky and arranged most of it myself’. Drawn mostly from Tchaikovsky’s works for piano, the score also includes adapted arias and other numbers from The Tsarina’s Slippers, the duet from the incomplete opera Romeo and Juliet and a section of the symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini.

New Gestures
Pushkin’s verse-novel has an anonymous narrator, who helps the reader to understand his characters’ thoughts and motivations. Lacking the narrator, Cranko developed an original language of mime to achieve the same purpose, to powerful dramatic effect. The use of free gesture unrelated to conventional ballet mime was popular among UK-based choreographers of the 20th century; the modern yet still distinctly ‘danced’ movements that Cranko used in Onegin were a distinctive trait of many of his ballets.

Reflections of Genius
Another of Cranko’s innovations in adapting Onegin as a ballet was to introduce a mirror motif into the drama. In Act I, girls from the neighbourhood play a game, during which Olga, looking into a mirror, sees Lensky approach. In the next act, set in Tatiana’s bedroom, she stares into a mirror and has a dream vision of Onegin, with whom she dances the passionate ‘mirror’ pas de deux. This provides a link between the scenes, and is an effective way of crossing from reality to the fantasy world of Tatiana’s mind.

The devil crops up in opera from around the mid-19th century, as composers increasingly turned to gothic stories and folktales for inspiration. To begin with, he was a minor presence – like Samiel in Weber’s Der Freischütz (1821), who exists only as a threatening voice in the Wolf’s Glen scene. However, by 1831 he had taken centre stage, as Bertram in Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable. Bertram’s progress from Act I's jocular-macabre prankster, through Act III's terrifying hell-raiser and finally to the melancholy father of Act V is one of the most interesting aspects of Meyerbeer’s masterpiece.

An explosion of musical interest in Goethe’s verse-drama Faust led to yet more fascinating devils stalking across the operatic boards. Each operatic interpretation of Goethe’s devil, Mephistopheles, is different. Berlioz (La Damnation de Faust, 1846; originally a dramatic oratorio, now often performed as an opera) makes him a pitiless villain, who tricks Faust into their pact, then sweeps him to the infernal regions in the terrifying ride to Hell. Gounod’s Méphistophélès (Faust, 1859) can be almost as vicious, as in the Act IV cathedral scene with Marguerite, but has a dandyish charm, exemplified in his Act II aria ‘Le Veau d’or’ and the Act III quartet. Boito made the title character of Mefistofele (1868) a nihilistic philosopher, who enters the pact with Faust after he has made a wager with the heavenly host that he can corrupt a good man. He expresses his contempt for both mankind and heaven in his Act I aria ‘Son lo spirito che nega sempre tutto’ – a thrilling piece, both frightening and blackly humorous.

Offenbach learnt from Gounod and Boito that devils are at their most compelling when they combine malignancy with charm and wit, and used his knowledge in the creation of the four villains (usually sung by one performer) in Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881). Offenbach’s devils are thoroughly unpleasant – and yet we appreciate their dry humour (as in Counsellor Lindorf’s ‘Dans les rôles d’amoureux langoureux’) and suave repartee (as in Dapertutto’s elegant ‘Scintille, diamant’). Nothing, though, stops them from being merciless – like all demonic figures.

Unless that is, they are devils from Russia and Eastern Europe. These are usually more cheerful and tameable than their western counterparts. The devil in Tchaikovsky’s The Tsarina’s Slippers (Cherevichki, 1887) is more interested in courting the witch Solokha (with whom he has the delightful folksy duet ‘Osedlayu Pomelo’ in Act I) than in causing destruction. True, he tries half-heartedly to get the hero Vakula’s soul, but once Vakula vanquishes him with a crucifix he becomes docile, and plays a vital part in bringing the story to its happy end. Meanwhile in Dvořák’s comic opera The Devil and Kate (1899) the devil Marbuel turns out to be a coward; no match for the sharp-tongued village girl Kate, who uses his terror of her to win wealth and status.

Though the 19th century was really the devil's operatic heyday, he had one final great incarnation as Nick Shadow in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress(1951). Like all great devils, Nick has his attractive side. What could be more enticing than his promises to Tom of wealth and loyal service? And his jolly banter with his master (as in the Act II duet ‘My tale shall be told, Both by young and by old’) certainly shows his diabolic humour. Even when he plays cards for Tom’s soul in Act III Shadow maintains a certain charm. However, he’s certainly not to be trusted, and once he’s lost at cards (despite cheating) he reveals a terrifying malignancy in his closing infernal aria ‘I burn! I freeze!’, condemning Tom to insanity as he descends to Hell.

However charming they may appear, and whatever they promise you, devils are not to be meddled with!

King Florestan and his Queen have invited all the fairies to be godmothers at the christening of their daughter, Princess Aurora. The festivities are interrupted by the arrival of the wicked fairy Carabosse who, in her anger at not being invited, gives Aurora a spindle, saying that she will one day prick her finger on it and die. The Lilac Fairy promises that Aurora will not die but fall into a deep sleep, from which she will be woken by a prince’s kiss…

A Difficult Birth

When The Sleeping Beauty was first performed in St Petersburg in 1890 it wasn’t immediately popular. Russian audiences, who were used to formulaic, uncomplicated ballet music, found Tchaikovsky’s richly symphonic score impenetrable, and they thought that director Ivan Vsevolozhsky’s designs were too lavish. However, these very qualities, along with the ballet’s fairytale libretto, appealed to a generation of luminaries including Stravinsky, Balanchine and Pavlova, who championed the work. Beauty was the most performed ballet in the early Soviet repertory and has since been adapted by numerous choreographers, becoming a classical ballet favourite.

‘It Suits Me Perfectly’

When Vsevolozhsky proposed the subject of The Sleeping Beauty to Tchaikovsky, the composer was delighted. He had always loved ballet, and leapt at the chance to compose the music for another fairytale after his 1877 Swan Lake. His passionate score skillfully expresses the drama and this, along with moments such as the tender and beautiful Act III love pas de deux,make Beauty one of the greatest ballet scores of all time.

Awaking an Opera House

During World War II the Royal Opera House stopped producing opera and ballet and became a dance hall (an era celebrated in the present day with the ROH's monthly tea dances). There was a possibility that it would remain so after the war, but it was eventually agreed that it should resume its former identity. Ninette de Valois’ Sadler’s Wells Ballet was chosen to perform at the reopening on 20 February 1946. De Valois selected The Sleeping Beauty – already a company favourite – as the work that would be performed, in a new production. The ballet, with stunning designs by Oliver Messel, dazzled audiences and restored the Royal Opera House to its former glory. It also cemented the position of Sadler’s Wells Ballet (which was to become The Royal Ballet) in its new home.

The Rose Adagio from Act I of The Sleeping Beauty is one of ballet’s most famous set pieces. It occurs during Princess Aurora’s 16th birthday party. After a lively, fleet allegro entrance, she is introduced to four suitors with whom she dances an adagio containing eight very exposed and challenging unsupported balances. The sequence has become one of the most loved and most parodied in all of ballet; Christopher Wheeldon included a slapstick version of the dance, the so-called Tart Adagio, in his 2011 ballet Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

An Evolving Ballet

The Sleeping Beauty, like many famous ballets, is a constantly evolving work. Over the years, figures from Sergei Diaghilev to Helgi Tómasson have created their own interpretations of Marius Petipa’s original choreography, along with unique designs from a variety of artists. Monica Mason and Christopher Newton’s 2006 The Sleeping Beauty for The Royal Ballet (the production that the Company performs today) returned to Petipa’s original steps, but interpolated choreography from Frederick Ashton, Anthony Dowell and Wheeldon. The designs for the current revival incorporate fairytale sets and costumes by Peter Farmer with others that have been gradually altered to resemble Messel’s vibrant originals. Each time the production is performed there is something new to admire.

Production sponsored by Coutts and generously supported by Sarah and Lloyd Dorfman, Peter Lloyd and in memory of Ellen Burkhardt, with additional philanthropic support from The Royal Opera House Endowment Fund. Original production (2006) made possible by The Linbury Trust, Sir Simon and Lady Robertson and Marina Hobson OBE.

At a Christmas party hosted by her parents, Clara receives the gift of a Nutcracker doll from the magician Drosselmeyer. Later, when all the guests have left and the house is asleep, she discovers that the Nutcracker is enchanted, and is swept away on a magical adventure…

Peter Wright’s exquisite 1984 Nutcracker for The Royal Ballet recalls the lavishly traditional air of the original production, with some changes to the scenario to bring it closer to Hoffmann's original story. With magnificent designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman, including a gorgeously decorated tree that magically grows, and beautifully coloured imaginings of the fantastical Sugar Garden, this festive production has become a much-loved staple of the Company’s repertory.

A Symbol of Christmas

Tchaikovsky’s music for The Nutcracker is one of the most popular ballet scores of all time. From the flurrying sounds of the Waltz of the Snowflakes to the wildly energetic Trepak Dance, the composer’s memorable melodies and rich, varied orchestrations have become indelibly linked with the celebration of Christmas.

The Sugar Plum Fairy

Wright’s adaptation of the choreography for The Nutcracker is characterized by buoyant footwork and lyrical freedom in the arms and upper body. Perhaps the best-loved number from the ballet is the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy in Act II. Comprising sharp, filigree choreography and lasting for ten minutes, it is one of the longest and most technically challenging solos in the repertory, and a role that many ballerinas long to dance.

The Nutcracker runs from 8 December 2015 to 14 January 2015. Tickets are sold out though returns may become available, with a limited number of day tickets available on the day of each performance.The production will be relayed live to cinemas around the world on 16 December. Find your nearest cinema and sign up for our cinema newsletter.

The production is staged with generous philanthropic support from Lady Jarvis and The Royal Opera House Endowment Fund.

Composers often face significant challenges when composing for the ballet: what instruments might denote a flock of swans? How do you evoke a forest at midnight? Choreographer Marius Petipa set the bar particularly high when he created the scenario for The Nutcracker. Petipa wanted Tchaikovsky to write music for a Sugar Plum Fairy, but how might she sound? And what exactly is a sugar plum?

A sugar plum is not, as you might think, the kind of candied fruit that you can buy on the ground floor of Fortnum and Mason. In fact a sugar plum is nothing to do with fruit at all and is a hard sweet made up of several layers of sugar, not dissimilar to a sugared almond or the shell on Smarties. The process used to make that coating is called dragée in French, which is how Petipa refers to the Fairy who commands the Kingdom of Sweets and like her namesake, she glitters with sugar.

The second act of The Nutcracker is full of such delicacies, specified by various flavoured national dances. There at least Tchaikovsky had musical tropes he could turn to, but there was little musical guidance when it came to La Fée dragée. Tchaikovsky’s solution was simple but radical: he would use an entirely new instrument, the céleste (or celesta).

Auguste Mustel invented this keyboard instrument in 1886, six years before The Nutcracker had its premiere. Mustel had built harmoniums for a number of years, but his father had meanwhile pioneered the dulcitone, in which hammers strike a series of tuning forks. The glockenspiel-like metal plates that his son Auguste used in the new version of the instrument allowed its delicate sound to carry within an orchestral context (aided by a system of wooden resonators). Its high, bell-like sonority was doubtless what led Mustel to dub his new invention the céleste (heavenly).

Having heard the instrument in Paris in summer 1891, Tchaikovsky asked his publisher Pyotr Jurgenson to acquire one for The Nutcracker. Keen not to let this innovative detail of orchestra out of the bag, he asked Jurgenson to keep it a secret; otherwise colourful colleagues such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov might use the instrument first.

Sadly Parisian composer Ernest Chausson had already pipped Tchaikovsky to the post by using the celesta in his 1888 incidental music to The Tempest. But what Tchaikovsky has over Chausson (and many composers since) is the clear link he created between the sound and a specific character. When the Sugar Plum Fairy first appears in Act 2, among the transparent columns and fountains of Petipa’s synopsis, the celesta plays in combination with two harps, high woodwind and shimmering string harmonics. The effect is magical.

Later on in the act, as part of the Grand pas de deux, the Sugar Plum Fairy has an equally beguiling solo variation. Here Petipa wanted the music to sound like droplets of water falling from a fountain. Tchaikovsky’s combination of pizzicato strings, celesta and a descending bass clarinet offers the perfect musical representation, to which Lev Ivanov (who continued the choreography of The Nutcracker due to Petipa's illness) added difficult but delicate steps.

But as well as the glittering sound of the celesta, its heavenly name may have also caught the composer's attention; Tchaikovsky had certainly been thinking of the afterlife during the completion of The Nutcracker. The death of his sister Sasha in the spring of 1891 had affected him deeply, but it also provided the inspiration for a project he had previously struggled to complete. Clara and her candied counterpart, the otherworldly Sugar Plum Fairy, were to be Tchaikovsky’s tribute to his late sister. He now had the perfect instrument to describe her.

Kasper Holten’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is now available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray from the ROH Shop.

The production had its premiere in February 2013 and was relayed live to cinemas around the world during the run.

Tchaikovsky’s tragic work is based on Alexander Pushkin's poem of the same name. The production is the director's first for The Royal Opera and foregrounds the power of memory and regret. ‘It is about real people and something that we can all identify with,’ says Kasper. ‘It needs to have a direct emotional communication with the audience. It is special and fragile but also passionate.’

The Royal Opera's Eugene Onegin starring Simon Keenlyside, Krassimira Stoyanova and Pavol Breslik will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday 1 June at 6pm.

Eugene Onegin is Tchaikovsky's most widely performed opera (although the composer preferred the term 'lyrical scenes'). Based on the novel of the same name, it tells the story of literature-loving Tatyana Larin who falls passionately in love with dashing and worldly Eugene Onegin. He rejects her, despite having feelings for her and his subsequent actions lead to tragedy.

Eugene Onegin by Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky tells the story of literature-loving Tatyana who falls passionately in love with dashing and worldly Eugene Onegin. Onegin rejects her, despite having feelings for her. His subsequent actions lead to tragedy. Years later, believing that he is incapable of happiness, Onegin unexpectedly meets Tatyana again…

The story of Eugene Onegin is taken from the novel in verse of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. A singer friend of Tchaikovsky suggested that Pushkin’s story would make a fine opera. Tchaikovsky became so excited that he stayed awake all that night working out the scenario. He wrote much of his libretto himself, sometimes setting Pushkin verbatim as in Tatyana’s Letter Scene, and occasionally (as with Prince Gremin’s aria) writing his own text.

Tchaikovsky wanted Eugene Onegin to be simple and direct in style, very different to the grand operas so popular in the 1870s. He referred to the piece as ‘seven lyric scenes’ rather than as an ‘opera’, and arranged for the premiere to be performed by Moscow Conservatory students, who he felt would act more convincingly than the singers at the Bolshoi Theatre. The premiere was admired, and by 1884 Eugene Onegin had become a staple of the Russian repertory, and the favourite opera of Tsar Alexander III.

Tchaikovsky demonstrates sympathy for all four principal characters in Eugene Onegin, particularly the complex Tatyana and Onegin. Onegin begins as an elegant dandy; his increasingly passionate music in the later scenes reveals his growing understanding both of his past mistakes and of his love for Tatyana. Tatyana evolves from the ardent girl of the Letter Scene to a woman still very much in love, but more restrained, aware that she cannot remake the past.

Kasper Holten’s production focuses on the power of memory – how it shapes us and how we gain self-knowledge through experience. The stage becomes increasingly full of objects symbolic for Tatyana and Onegin as time passes and they and finally realize that they can never return to their past lives.

Eugene Onegin runs from 4 - 20 February 2013. Tickets have now sold out, but day tickets and returns may still be available. The production is generously supported by the Monument Trust with additional philanthropic support from Sir Simon and Lady Robertson, David Hancock and The Artists’ Circle. The Production Director is generously supported by Hamish and Sophie Forsyth.

In Russia, Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin is as well known as Hamlet is in Britain and as cherished as Pride and Prejudice. It is little wonder, then, that it has inspired numerous adaptations, including Tchaikovsky’s 1879 opera and John Cranko’s 1965 ballet Onegin. Outside Russia, it is these lyrical adaptations rather than Pushkin’s original that have entered our cultural consciousness.

In May 1877, Tchaikovsky was feeling bruised after the failure of Swan Lake in Moscow. Petipa and Minkus’s La Bayadère had been that year’s great balletic success, so, turning away from ballet, Tchaikovsky began to think about a new opera. The choice of Pushkin’s much-revered Eugene Onegin, suggested during a conversation with friends, was decidedly bold:

The idea seemed wild to me and I did not say anything, but later, while eating alone in a pub I remembered about Onegin and started thinking. I thought the idea […] possible, then became captivated and by the end of my meal I had decided.

Rather than a straight word-for-word adaptation, however, Tchaikovsky’s own libretto binned Onegin’s youthful exploits and focused on Tatyana Larina’s fate. For the many Russians who loved the original, the opera proved almost unrecognizable.

Not only had Tchaikovsky cut one of the most admired texts in Russian literature to ribbons, but he had also changed its tone, echoing a predominant new trend for realism. One reviewer sarcastically pondered “How can you really write music to words like these: ‘Hello, how are you?’ – ‘Very well, thank you’?” But that emotional honesty was the opera’s eventual key to success and was due to Tchaikovsky’s own experiences in matters of the heart.

Eugene Onegin was written at a decisive moment in the composer’s life. Bowing to external pressures, he married Antonina Miliukova in July 1877, ‘a woman,’ he said, ‘with whom I am not the least in love’. The marriage was Tchaikovsky’s well-meaning attempt to conceal his homosexuality, as he had explained to his gay brother Modest the previous year:

"I am now going through a very critical period of my life. I will go into more detail later, but for now I will simply tell you, I have decided to get married. It is unavoidable. I must do it, not just for myself but for you, Modest, and all those I love. I think that for both of us our dispositions are the greatest and most insuperable obstacle to happiness, and we must fight our natures to the best of our ability. So far as I am concerned, I will do my utmost to get married this year, and if I lack the necessary courage, I will at any rate abandon my habits forever."

The marriage was disaster and, as Tchaikovsky’s fame grew, that balance between public and private life became ever more precarious. Tchaikovsky poured his insecurities into Eugene Onegin, completed shortly after his marriage collapsed. Pushkin’s story offered a perfect opportunity to explore the wrestle between desire and social convention.

The opera took a while to find favour at home, but its expressive and musical power communicated immediately in countries where audiences were less familiar with the original. Gustav Mahler was an early advocate for the opera and performed Eugene Onegin both in Hamburg and in Vienna, where he became director of the Imperial Opera House. Since its UK premiere at the Olympic Theatre in London on 17 October 1892 it has been a staple of the British repertory, providing a dramatic and musical showcase for subsequent generations of actor-singers.

Tchaikovsky’s opera had a even wider impact in 1965, when its structure - rather than Pushkin’s verse novel - became the inspiration for John Cranko’s ballet. Cranko had originally pitched the idea to the board of the Royal Opera House, though it was rejected, possibly due to their unswerving admiration for Tchaikovsky’s opera. Moving to Stuttgart, Cranko was determined to pay his homage and commissioned a ‘new’ Tchaikovsky score from Kurt-Heinze Stolze, who in turn became Cranko’s most important musical advisor.

In creating the score for Onegin, Stolze deliberately avoided any material from the opera. Instead he focussed on music from The Seasons, Tchaikovsky’s collection of piano pieces composed a couple of years before Eugene Onegin. Additionally, Stolze employs themes from the opera Cherevichki (performed as The Tsarina’s Slippers at the Royal Opera House in 2009) and, for Tatyana and Onegin’s gruelling farewell, the second half of the symphonic fantasia Francesca da Rimini.

Whether sung or danced, however, Tatyana Larina and Eugene Onegin’s story has an irrepressible power to move. Their tragedy may be Pushkin’s invention, but it was Tchaikovsky’s emotional honesty that gave the opera its clout. In the fatalistic tones of Swan Lake and Eugene Onegin or the fairy-tale narrative of The Sleeping Beauty, Tchaikovsky continually reminds us of his negative views of love.

Providing a suitably heady soundworld for those tales, audiences now treasure his adaptations as much as the originals. Adapting Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin was a particularly bold decision, but it proved decisive, producing one of the greatest operas of all time and, in turn, spurring an equally poignant full-length ballet.

The curtain rises on a frozen landscape at dawn. A lone figure is waiting for his closest friend, whom the previous night he challenged to a duel. This is the landowner and poet Vladimir Lensky, and, as he sits waiting for Eugene Onegin, he meditates on what will happen to him, with a premonition of his death.

Tchaikovsky’s 1879 opera Eugene Onegin, based on the Pushkin novel in verse of the same name, is the story of Tatyana Larina, and the tragic outcome of her love for the dashing but emotionally immature Eugene Onegin. Tatyana is not the only one to suffer the effects of Onegin’s carelessness. Having rejected Tatyana, Onegin flirts with her sister Olga – the fiancée of his best friend Lensky – and is challenged by the furious Lensky to fight a duel. He kills Lensky, just as he earlier destroyed Tatyana’s hopes.

Alone, waiting for the duel to begin, Lensky asks where his youth has gone. Pliant strings accompany his appeal for sympathy while a descending line introduces the aria proper. The main theme is immediately familiar from an earlier, less angular, version that accompanied Tatyana’s declaration of love for Onegin in the Letter Scene at the end of the second scene. Here, however, the theme has a cruel chromatic sting in its tail - hope is futile.

This musical parallel in the two arias confirms an underlying kinship between Tatyana and Lensky. Furthermore, both arias are implicitly addressed to Onegin: Tatyana’s letter scene is founded on misplaced hopes, while Lensky’s farewell to life is tinged with regret. Both Tatyana and Lensky are dreamers – one lost in the romantic world of novels, the other an aspiring poet – and they suffer because of it.

As Lensky questions what lies ahead, Tchaikovsky uses an ascending and descending melodic line both in the voice and the woodwind, much as he does in the equally fatalistic Swan Lake (completed shortly before Eugene Onegin). Lensky’s future is unclear and the overlapping woodwind solos that snake around his vocal line illustrate this. The effect is increasingly claustrophobic.

A middle section moves away into the relative key of G major. But such sunny music is cruelly short-lived; the melody’s punishing chromatic twist is repeated and we are soon back in E minor. A dialogue between an oboe and clarinet recalls Olga and Lensky’s past happiness. Such memories inspire a more dramatic reprise of the opening melody, with the accompanying woodwind lines becoming ever more elaborate.

The cruellest illusion, however, is yet to come. Lensky calls for Olga to come to him and declares his intention to marry her. Tchaikovsky shifts into distant key of A flat major and Lensky’s vocal line takes on a heroic style; briefly, he is the model of a daring lover. But that tonal disparity merely underlines the impossibility of such a resolution and, as soon as Tchaikovsky has established his ‘false’ key, the music shifts back into E minor. Lensky repeats the opening question of the aria, the violins and a lone horn respond and Onegin arrives for the duel.

The aria text, in English:

"Where, oh where have you gone,
golden days of my youth?
What does the coming day hold for me?
My gaze searches in vain;
all is shrouded in darkness!
No matter: Fate's law is just.
Should I fall, pierced by the arrow,
or should it fly wide,
'tis all one; both sleeping and waking
have their appointed hour.
Blessed is the day of care,
blessed, too, the coming of darkness!
Early in the morning the dawn-light gleams
and the day begins to brighten, while I, perhaps,
will enter the mysterious shadow of the grave!
And the memory of a young poet
will be engulfed by Lethe's sluggish stream.
The world will forget me; but you, you! Olga!
Say, will you come, maid of beauty,
to shed a tear on the untimely urn
and think: he loved me!
To me alone he devoted
the sad dawn of his storm-tossed life!
Oh, Olga, I loved you,
to you alone I devoted
the sad dawn of my storm-tossed life!
Oh, Olga, I loved you!
My heart's beloved, my desired one,
come, oh come!
My desired one,
come, I am your betrothed,
come, come!
I wait for you, my desired one,
come, come; I am your betrothed!
Where, where, where have you gone,
golden days, golden days of my youth?"

Kasper Holten's new Royal Opera production of Eugene Onegin opens on 4 February 2013.